A 24-year-old at the peak of his powers, who more than sometimes makes people wonder just how he does what he does, signs a contract so long and definitive that it feels like a lifetime deal.
He’s a phenomenon, who neither looks nor plays quite like anyone else in the sport, which is the whole point, of course. The list of reasons he poses a befuddling headache for defensive opponents is short.
It is because they’ve never dealt with a problem quite like him.
This is also why, after less than three years in his current uniform, the club got so attached to his productivity that they wanted to keep him around for what might as well be forever.
Because this is the opening weeks of 2025, we are talking about Erling Haaland and Manchester City. If we could rewind to June 2020, hop the Atlantic, switch sports, and remember our facemasks, all of the above could also be applied to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Patrick Mahomes signed his blockbuster Chiefs contract in 2020. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
As Haaland woke up to the first day of his extraordinary agreement — revealed by The Athletic’s David Ornstein and running until the summer of 2034 — one of its quirks was that the contract has a far more American slant than something you might traditionally expect from the English Premier League and its four-time reigning champions.
Megadeals are not just plentiful but are valid points of pride in North America, with the offers negotiated by the National Football League’s best quarterbacks having no patience for cautious length or the shackles of inflation.
That said, Mahomes’ 10-year, $450million extension five summers ago, similar to Haaland’s in its duration and career timing, sent eyebrows skywards, even for the States, where longevity is a currency in itself. In a place where lifetime endorsement deals mean Jordans remain in fashion and Juan Soto just recently took baseball’s market peak to 15 years and $765million, Mahomes’ contract was still remarkable for its time.
It takes a lot for an elite athlete to consider committing so comprehensively to one place and even more faith, perhaps, for a team to lock in both an astronomical sum of money and a hefty chunk of its future.
This kind of thing doesn’t get offered to everybody. Only a celebrated handful of athletes can perform feats that prompt their employer to gaze into the future and see only glory, be it Mahomes’ creative ingenuity and ability to produce offense from nothing, or Haaland’s terrifying combination of strength, speed, body control and finishing ability.
There are personal factors at play, too. As The Athletic reported, Haaland clearly has a special affinity for Manchester that traces to his father Alf Inge Haaland’s time as a player with City. Mahomes was raised in Texas but settled effortlessly in Kansas City and has gone so far as to invest in sports franchises in the area.
Haaland and his father, Alf-Inge, with the 2022-23 Premier League trophy. (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Contracts of such length often, but not always, require a certain strength of relationship, some sort of genuine closeness, amid a sporting world awash with money and where balance sheet priorities mostly trump all.
In revealing Haaland’s contract, The Athletic detailed how a significant factor was Haaland’s rapport with Pep Guardiola and City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak. The same might be said for Mahomes’ bond with not only head coach Andy Reid, but Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who incidentally has tight soccer connections and whose late father, Lamar, is in the National Soccer Hall of Fame.
Mahomes had won just one Super Bowl when he inked his deal and he’s added a pair more since. In his 31 months in Manchester, Haaland has already clinched two Premier League titles and a Champions League winners’ medal.
The precise cash amount of this week’s arrangement has not been made public. You can guarantee it’s an absolute fortune. If Haaland keeps scoring at his current rate, with 111 goals in 126 games so far, one day it will feel like a bargain.
Yet the most interesting ongoing part of all this is whether it sparks a series of copycat moves in the Premier League. Players such as Cole Palmer at Chelsea have already committed to nine years, but Haaland is a star among stars and now maybe a precursor for more top players in the earlier half of their twenties seeking contracts that stretch for most of their careers.
Mahomes restructures contract with Chiefs
Mimicry in dealmaking is certainly how it works in American sports and it did with Mahomes, especially on the financial side. Heading into the 2024 season, Mahomes had gone from being far and away the highest-paid player in the league to the joint 12th-highest-paid quarterback per annual salary in the space of a few years.
Manchester City supporters, despite the sudden tailspin of form that befell Guardiola’s squad since November, are sitting on a comfortable and fairly exclusive island right now, a rare fanbase that can presume with some confidence that their chief goalscorer will be sticking around into the 2030s. They may have some more company soon.
And if decade-long deals become commonplace, don’t be surprised if they also start getting more creative.
On the U.S. side, you see all kinds of weird happenings in the name of driving up the headline price, in baseball especially for some reason. Shohei Ohtani, Major League Baseball’s brightest star, gets only $2million of his $70m annual salary from the Los Angeles Dodgers upfront, with the rest over many years stretching beyond the end of his career.
Shohei Ohtani has one of baseball’s richest and most creative deals. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Magic Johnson was once offered a 25-year, $25million deal by former Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss, though that was later revealed to be a publicity stunt.
In baseball, Alex Rodriguez earned two separate 10-year deals, the only athlete ever to do so, while hockey has seen greats such as Sidney Crosby get 12-year contracts and busts such as former No. 1 draft pick Rick DiPietro awarded 15.
Most infamous of the bunch, perhaps, is Bobby Bonilla, now 61, who will collect a $1.19million annual paycheck from the New York Mets for 10 more years because the team thought it better to spread out the amount owed to him at 8 percent interest. The Mets felt safe doing so because their then-owners were making so much money from investing with Bernie Madoff. Ouch.
Haaland’s deal, remarkably long, extravagantly expensive — but probably worth every penny — seems to offer a far safer investment than that.
